I Have No Mouth & I Must Scream

by Harlan Ellison

“In the kingdom of the blind, a one-eyed man is God.”

Why should I clown around with all the artificial scenes when I’ve been on a continual high since the day I was born. I’ll take my first fix or sugar cube when I come down, troops, but that may be a long way off if it is possible for me, unjugged, to write things like

“Know thyself? If I knew myself, I’d run away.”

“Heaven is what you mix all the days of your life, but you call it dreams. You have one chance to buy your Heaven with all the intents and ethics of your life. That is why everyone considers Heaven such a lovely place. Because it is dreams, special dreams, in which you exist. What you have to do is live up to them.”

It was the woman his finest instincts had needed to make them valid; the woman who not only gave to him, but to whom he could give; the woman of memory, of desire, of youth, of restlessness, of completion. A dream. And here, against the softspeaking bubbling water, a reality.

I love this line and how it later contrasts With the actual reality.

The burial ground of his forever. The garbage dump, the slain meat, the putrefying reality of his dreams and his Heaven.

And they all agreed that the expression on the face was not one of happiness. There were many possible explanations for that expression, but none of them would have said terror, for it was not terror. They would not have said helplessness, for it was not that, either. They might have settled on a pathetic sense of loss, had their sensibilities run that deep, but none of them would have felt that the expression said, with great finality: a man may truly live in his dreams, his noblest dreams, but only, only if he is worthy of those dreams. It did not rain that night, anywhere in the known universe.

I turned around and it was—whooops. I almost called her by her real name. It was Maggie. She was in the chorus line at one of the hotels, and I suspect she was hooking on the side. We talked and she invited me home with her. But it stirred up all sorts of remembrances of the chick, and most particularly the bedroom and bathroom of her apartment in Los Angeles. Strange that I would think of that, at that moment, but I remembered vividly walking into the bedroom the first time I came to pick her up. Everything was plush red velvet, like a New Orleans whorehouse. The bathroom fixtures were gold dolphins spewing out water. There was a frantic need to be elegant for this girl. She had come from simple beginnings, and “class” was her goal in this life. Somehow, seeing her again in Vegas, she fitted the town more precisely than anyone else I’d ever met. I hate Vegas. It represents a physical manifestation of evil in this country, for my money. (None of which I lose at the tables, incidentally; I’m phenomenally lucky.)

I stripped down naked (which is the way I write frequently) and started writing the story.

It's honestly kind of fitting, That I guy who writes such real things he's doing it while naked. It adds another layer of horror.

There was a surrealistic presence to the woman. She was almost automated, not a flicker of expression on her face, the eyes fixed and unwavering. Only when the gong rang, someone down the line had pulled a jackpot, did she look up. And at that moment Kostner knew what was wrong and immoral and deadly about Vegas, about legalized gambling, about setting the traps all baited and open in front of the average human.